April io, 19 19] 



NATURE 



109 



not have been discovered if the use of dogs had I 

 been prohibited. ] 



Though the advances in medicine of recent 

 years have been so marked, much remains to be 

 discovered. If this Bill is allowed to become 

 law, all research in this country into such prob- 

 lems as the causes and treatment of diabetes, of 

 Bright's disease, of heart disease, of dropsy, of 

 disorders of the stomach and intestines, and many 

 others, will be hampered to such an extent that 

 progress in our knowledge will come to an end, 

 except in so far as it can be attained by observ-a- 

 tions and experiments on human patients them- 

 selves. 



A prohibition of the use of dogs would be 

 equally disastrous for the progress of* surgery. 

 The fundamental advances made during the last 

 twenty years, which have proved of such ines- 

 timable value not only in civil practice; but also 

 during the war in the treatment of our wounded 

 soldiers, were achieved in the first instance by 

 means of experiments on dogs. By such experi- 

 ments it was first shown to be possible to excise 

 portions of the alimental canal, to make openings 

 from one part to the other in order to relieve 

 obstruction, to remove part or the whole of the 

 internal organs, to implant bone and tissues so as 

 to restore defects, to deal fearlessly with the cavity 

 of the chest, to sew up wounds in the living and 

 beating heart, to restore continuity of wounded 

 blood-vessels, and to perform many others of the 

 feats which are the triumph of modern surgery. 



Much more remains to be achieved in order to 

 abolish or alleviate even a fraction of the pain 

 and suffering which are all around us. But all 

 activity in this direction would be hampered, and 

 much of it brought to a standstill, if the Dogs' 

 Protection Bill is allowed to become law. 



Nor would the Bill diminish by one jot any 

 pains at present suffered by dogs. Under the law 

 as it at present stands, the infliction of pain on 

 dogs is already prevented. According to the 

 regulations now in force, the animal has to be 

 under the full influence of an anaesthetic during 

 the whole operation, and to be killed before re- 

 covering consciousness. Or, if the object of the 

 experiment requires that the dog should be 

 allowed to survive, it must be at once killed 

 under an anassthetic should pain supervene at any 

 time after the op)eration. 



These regulations can be justified on purely 

 scientific grounds, since the existence of pain 

 during an experiment is a disturbing factor, which 

 is not only an unnecessary complication, but may 

 also vitiate the whole result of the experiment. 

 The only effect of the Bill, therefore, so far as 

 dogs are concerned, would be that a few more of 

 the stray and homeless dogs that are now used for 

 experiment would be added to the 20,000 or more 

 which are killed by suff"ocation during each year 

 at the Dogs' Home at Battersea. 



We cannot believe the Government is' so in- 

 different to the advancement of medical science 

 and the human suflfering which it aims at alleviat- 

 ing that such an act of folly as is contemplated in 

 NO. 2580, VOL. 103] 



the Bill now under consideration will be per- 

 mitted to be placed on the Statute Book because 

 of the importvmity of certain private members who 

 disregard all that scientific knowledge of disease 

 has to tell them. The Bill is down for the Report 

 stage on May 23, and we look to Ministers to 

 exert themselves sufficiently on that day to protect 

 us from such a pernicious measure. 



SIR WILLIAM CROOKES. O.M., F.R.S. 



''T^HE few remaining British men of science 

 -*- whose memories extend back to 1862, in 

 reviewing that- long period of the past, never 

 lose from the mental vision one remarkable 

 figure. The occasion of the International Ex- 

 hibition in that year afforded an opportunity by 

 which a young English chemist sprang into 

 sudden fame. The discovery of a new element, 

 however remarkable its properties, would, per- 

 haps, not have proved sufficient to rouse the 

 interest of a mid-Victorian public, but the 

 method of sf>ectrum analysis used in its discovery 

 being then new, coupled with the award of a 

 medal to the exhibit, brought thallium and its 

 discoverer very prominently into notice. The 

 great scientific career thus begun nearly sixty 

 years ago is now closed by the death of Sir 

 William Crookes on Friday, April 4, not only 

 full of years and honours, but also busy in the 

 laboratory to the last. 



Crookes was born on June 17, 1832. At an 

 early age he entered as a student at the newly 

 instituted Royal College of Chemistry in Oxford 

 Street, where he remained for some years under 

 Hofmann as demonstrator and assistant. Here 

 he found an atmosphere favourable to the develop- 

 ment of his talent for investigation, but it is 

 remarkable that the study of organic chemistry, 

 the chief direction followed by Hofmann and his 

 pupils, never seemed to attract him specially, and 

 many years afterwards he was not ashamed to 

 confess an almost entire ignorance of the work 

 which had occupied so large a number of 

 chemists, especially after Perkin's discovery of 

 the dyes and the general adoption of Kekul^'s 

 theory of benzene. His earliest paper records 

 his discovery of the seleniocyanides in 1857, and 

 he was then occupied for a time by the develop- 

 ments then taking place in the processes of photo- 

 graphy. The discovery of thallium by the appli- 

 cation of the spectroscope gave him occupation 

 for .several years, but after completing the study 

 of that element and its compounds it became 

 evident that his preference lay in the direction of 

 phenomena outside the range of ordinary chemical 

 investigation, and that his researches would be 

 pursued along no conventional lines. In passing, 

 it ought to be mentioned that he was instrumental 

 in securing the application of the powerful disin- 

 fectant properties of carbolic acid or phenol 

 during the disastrous spread of the cattle plague 

 in 1866. 



Meanwhile, Crookes was hard at work on facts 



